The EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment: Disciplining Competition Law Enforcement in China?

From the EU perspective, the conclusion of the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) was motivated, among other things, by a wish to ensure a level-playing field for European companies doing business in China. Among the commonly named market access obstacles for EU investors in China were preferential regulatory treatment enjoyed by Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs), including being shielded from competition law and occasional instances of discriminatory enforcement of competition rules against foreign companies. The negotiation of the CAI was an opportunity for the EU to address these concerns through legally binding commitments that would be subject to dispute resolution. This chapter analyses the competition-related provisions of the CAI through the lenses of international investment law and competition law. It reviews the current status quo of China’s competition law enforcement in the light of the binding commitments included in the CAI. This forward-looking assessment attempts to forecast the likely effects of the CAI on the procedural and institutional framework of antitrust enforcement in China, including its treatment of domestic SOEs and foreign companies.